David Attenborough’s Wild Isles hits close to home

Towering, timeless and welcoming, David Attenborough stands atop the White Cliffs of Dover. Having spent eight decades journeying to the most remote and exotic places on the planet, the 96-year-old makes a homecoming in new BBC documentary Wild Isles, a five-part series about the natural wonders of Britain and Ireland. “I can assure you that nature in these islands can be just as dramatic and spectacular as anything I’ve seen elsewhere,” he promises.

While doubting Attenborough is tantamount to treason, some might question the claim, given the splendour and variety of the naturalist’s previous globe-hopping series. Such concerns, however, are dismissed in the opening minutes with scenes of verdant canopies, gushing waterfalls and blustery mountains. The last of these, Scotland’s Cairngorms, are almost mistakable for the Arctic.

The locations are stunning but the cast is a little short on animal kingdom A-listers. Yet, as ever in Attenborough-BBC collaborations, natural occurrences are transformed into gripping narratives through dynamic shooting, canny editing and playful, personifying storytelling. In the first episode we see mating between dragonflies become a dance of coyness and courtship, while instinct-driven preying and surviving is elevated into a nervy battle of wits, whether a seal facing an orca or a puffin against a gull. One aerial dogfight is easily the most exhilarating and tragic flight scene involving a goose since Top Gun.

Action and intrigue are complemented by moments of delicate beauty. Ever-advancing camera technology allows us to witness otherwise imperceptible phenomena — from a dormouse’s quivering jaw to an insect’s propulsive wings — in remarkable detail. More arresting still are painterly and poetic compositions. At one point, an overhead shot of countless seagulls occupying a rock evokes a pointillism; another river-based section vividly brings to life Gerard Manley Hopkins’s sonnet “As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame”.

Elsewhere there are seas frequented by orcas, fields inhabited by frolicking foxes and small offshore islands providing seasonal refuge to hundreds of thousands of migrant birds. Yet for all the joy, awe and pride that the series elicits, Attenborough doesn’t let us forget that this is “one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world”. 

In the past 60 years, 97 per cent of hay meadows have been lost, while in the past 20 years, 60 per cent of the nation’s insect population has vanished. Other similarly troubling facts punctuate the programme, bringing the discourse surrounding global warming and environmental decay close to home. At times, Wild Isles can feel like both a celebration and an elegy. Attenborough suggests — still out on location, surrounded by puffins — that we view it as a call “to restore our isles for future generations.”

★★★★☆

On BBC1 from March 12 at 7pm